Insurance companies frequently rely on third-party service providers to assist the insurance companies in performing repeatable business tasks, such as transmitting notifications to claimants, verifying the data included in incoming documents, and matching incoming documents (such as medical bills or other documents) to existing claims. By employing third-party service providers, insurance companies are frequently able to minimize their own infrastructure and labor costs and improve operational efficiency.
When entering into an agreement for service, an insurance company and a service provider may agree on the level of service that that the service provider is expected to provide. As an example, the parties may agree that the service provider will complete 100% of the tasks that are requested of the service provider within two business days. These agreements with respect to service levels are frequently referred to as “Service Level Agreements (SLAs).”
With an SLA in place, other points of negotiation that may exist between an insurance company and a service provider include the fees paid by the insurance company to the provider and how many workers the service provider will need to allocate in order to provide the service at the agreed-upon level. Many service contracts indicate that the fees paid by the insurance company to the service provider is determined based on how many workers (frequently defined in terms of a number of full-time employees or “Full Time Equivalents (FTEs)”) the service provider needs to allocate for the service. In such a scenario, both parties are interested in determining the correct number of workers to employ—the insurance company does not want to pay for more workers than are necessary, while the service provider wishes to ensure that they have enough workers to provide the agreed-upon level of service.
While some technologies currently exist that may be used to determine the number of FTEs that should be engaged in order to satisfy SLAs, these technologies could be improved in terms of their ease of use, efficiency, accuracy, flexibility, and other factors. Additionally, current technologies do not adequately address how to allocate workers in the context of complex service agreements, such as service agreements that include multiple SLAs. Therefore, technologies are required that may be used for allocating resources that overcome the above-mentioned issues.